Managing one's finances for both short term and long term financial security can be very complex, time consuming, and expensive. Effective financial management can include tracking and categorizing all expenditures, navigating confusing tax laws, and tracking investments, banking, loans, and retirement accounts, among other financial concerns. Given the high complexity and cost, it is not surprising that more and more people find it necessary to obtain help, in one form or another, to manage their finances. Financial management systems, such as budgeting, financial transaction management, tax return preparation, and wealth management software programs and applications represent a potentially flexible, highly accessible, and affordable source of financial management assistance. However, traditional financial management systems suffer from drawbacks that lead to wasted time, or even mismanagement of important financial matters.
For instance, traditional financial management systems often lack the ability to properly categorize financial documents, such as receipts of purchase of goods or services, when such financial documents are not in a particular format. For example, when a consumer makes a purchase, the consumer often receives a receipt in paper form, which traditional financial management systems are unable to easily import and categorize. Even if the paper receipt is scanned or photographed so that it is in an electronic form the financial system may not be able to categorize the receipt or read specific expense amounts. This is largely due to the fact that traditional financial management systems rely on analytics methods that are inadequate to recognize the nature of the receipt. Such analytics methods are typically limited to optical character recognition (OCR) that attempts to read the receipt. However, paper receipts that are scanned or photographed are often crumpled or wrinkled and cannot be properly read by OCR. In such a case, a traditional financial management system may fail to categorize the receipt or may mis-categorize the receipt. This can lead to faulty expense categorization and subsequent mismanagement of budgeting. Additionally, the user may fail to deduct purchases that are tax deductible on a tax return or may improperly deduct a purchase that is not tax deductible. Thus, traditional financial management systems do not adequately facilitate the importing and/or categorization of financial documents.
What is needed is a method and system for facilitating the importation and categorization of financial documents in financial management systems.